


He Thought He Kept the Universe Alone

by SylvanWitch



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M, Malnutrition, Marooned, Suicidal Thoughts, Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-09-23 03:08:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17072348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: Running had made Ronon patient; Atlantis had made him soft.  He’d forgotten to remember that he was always—always—alone.





	He Thought He Kept the Universe Alone

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt: "Mornings."
> 
> The title and the inspiration for this story come from Robert Frost's "The Most of It," which is still one of my very favorite poems.

Some mornings, early in his stranding, he’d imagine a sail or the glint of a jumper windscreen reflecting the first sun coming up over the island at his back.

 

Some mornings, he would go to the edge of the water and stare out over the blank blue vastness and think nothing.

 

Some mornings, he’d shout across the empty blueness, and the world would answer him, a low, bone-vibrating thrumming that loosened his bowels and made him sweat.

 

He’d wait inland for the big waves to pass and come out to the shambles of his shelter and look to see if the Wraith dart had been dragged out to a sea burial yet.

 

It was still there, one hundred and fifty-two hashmarks carved into its crumpled wing.

 

He’d eaten its pilot one hundred and forty-eight days ago. 

 

The meat would have spoiled if he’d waited longer.  He didn’t need it to survive, of course.  There were fish in the sea, and inland—such as it was—there were little horned animals with tiny cloven hooves that he could ambush with a rock-tipped spear.  There were birds like hallucinations, every color of the rainbow.  The first fifty days or so, they didn’t even startle when he came under the trees and struck them with stones.

 

There was plenty to eat without eating the dead; starvation wouldn’t be what killed him.

 

No, devouring the wraith pilot was symbolic.  It said that Ronon was back in survival mode.  He was a runner again, even if he was confined to this kidney-shaped, mostly vertical island.

 

And part of him, a small, vicious creature backed into a paradisal corner, wanted _them_ —wraith, Atlantis, anyone—to find him with an unmistakable arm-bone in his hands, bright sharp teeth gnawing at the human-enough fingers. 

 

Wanted the horror on their faces.  Wanted to say— _I waited.  You didn’t come._

 

Running had made him patient; Atlantis had made him soft.  He’d started expecting things like breakfast and a hand on his shoulder and a low joke over a shared fire and a look exchanged that might mean something.

 

He’d forgotten to remember that he was always— _always_ —alone.

 

_Sheppard will come._

 

He’d clung to that pathetic litany for one hundred and fourteen days.

 

Then he’d let hope go like sand running between his fingers. It made the day-in, day-out easier; time passed more smoothly when he spent it not thinking.  Not expecting.

 

Still, mornings he came down to the edge and looked at the empty blue horizon.  You couldn’t say _searched_ —he wasn’t actively seeking.  He wasn’t expecting anything.

 

It was just the one habit he hadn’t yet broken.

 

The other habits—talking, eating with a fork, moving in formation, trusting someone to have his back—well, they were unnecessary at best and at worst dangerous.

 

He could live without them.

 

On day one hundred and sixty-two, he stopped masturbating.

 

It wasn’t the sand, though it got everywhere and made for unpleasant friction.

 

It wasn’t that he couldn’t recall an image of Sheppard stripped to a black tee-shirt, loose black workout pants low on his hips, wicked grin on his lips, inviting light in his eyes.  He could feel the lean strength of Sheppard’s body as they grappled.  He could smell Sheppard’s sweat, hear his harsh breath as he struggled to pin Ronon.

 

Those memories had served him well for a long while now.

 

It wasn’t the lack of material.

 

It was mostly that Ronon felt emptier for emptying himself. 

 

On day one hundred and sixty-five, the ocean at last reclaimed the dart.  He didn’t see it; he’d gone his usual route when the humming started—inland to the little green freshwater pool and then up the rockface, hands and toes, the sharp stone cutting into his palms and his fingers.

 

So far, the sea had never made it this far, but there were faint grey marks on the rockface just below his clinging feet, so Ronon knew it was possible.

 

This time, the waves came to the pool, contaminating it.

 

Ronon hoped the sweet spring of its source would stay clear; if it didn’t, he was done for.

 

He started planning for that eventuality.  His blaster had been broken in the crash, and the wraith’s too, bent almost beyond recognition.  But he’d scavenged what metal he could, bending the weak places until pieces came away, jagged and lethal if applied to the right spots.

 

He didn’t think he’d regret much, except maybe not pushing things with Sheppard just to see where they might have gone.  He’d been too afraid of doing something wrong, of upsetting the fragile balance of their friendship.

 

He should’ve shoved Sheppard against a wall and plunged his tongue down his throat and his hand down his pants.  He should’ve taken him apart, wrung noises out of him, made him weak-kneed and wet-eyed.

 

Yeah, he’d regret not seeing that for himself.

 

The spring was sweet, and Ronon spent a solid half-hour cursing.  It would have been easier if it had been tainted by the incursion of the sea.

 

On day one hundred and eighty, Ronon decided to climb to the highest point on the island.  He hadn’t tried it before because it was risky—the mountain was made of sharp rock, jagged and tearing, and it rose almost vertically from the only place he could easily access it—the pool.

 

 He’d felt a responsibility to stay alive, to be found in one piece. 

 

That responsibility had drained from him with the passing days.

 

Ronon knew that if he fell, he’d be lucky if the fall killed him immediately.  If it didn’t, he’d suffer in agony until the last breath rattled out of him.

 

He wondered if the little hooved creatures would eat his remains.  He didn’t think he’d mind so much.  If they ate his dog-tags, Sheppard would maybe find them in one of the little mounds of shit that were everywhere on the trail to the pool.  That made him laugh, a rusty, grating noise that sounded like it came from a stranger.

 

He resolved not to laugh again.

 

He climbed now because he didn’t care if he fell and because he wanted to see if there were any other islands within a reasonable distance, whereby reasonable meant that he could paddle a makeshift raft to it.

 

It wasn’t that he had hope of surviving forever, but it seemed cowardly to give up if he could make it to better ground.  Who knew?  Maybe there were other islands, maybe even other people.  He might do worse than finding a people like Teyla’s to take him in.

 

It wouldn’t be the same as Atlantis, but…  He shook the thought away.  Atlantis was gone, as inaccessible to him as Sateda was now.  He needed to forget about it, them…him.

 

He was a hundred meters off the ground, sweating hard, muscles already shaking with fatigue, when the humming started, vibrating the very rock beneath his fingers and toes.  He felt his left toehold shift, and he tried to brace for the giving way, but it happened too fast, and suddenly he was hanging from his fingertips, his full weight pulling them slowly away from the rock, which savaged his skin and made his grip slippery with blood.

 

Ronon grunted, suddenly unwilling to just let go, and thrust his stronger hand up, using every muscle in his body to make a grab for a better handhold.

He found it, dragging himself up the rockface, feeling it shred his remaining clothes and pierce his skin in a burning prickle of a thousand shallow cuts.  When he heaved himself over the edge to discover a plateau, he almost cried with relief. 

 

With painful slowness, he unclenched his jaw and let his muscles ease from their intense attention to survival and lay on his back panting up at the sky.  He lay there a long time just breathing.

 

Then he took stock of his situation and saw the suggestion of a path from the plateau to the top of the island.

 

He went up it carefully, feeling somehow less secure for not hugging the mountain to him, for walking upright like a man instead of clinging like a slug to the rockface.

 

The top of the mountain was a roughly circular, wide, flat space covered in vegetation so green it made him squint.  There were suggestions of habitation—what might have been a fire-ring, what was definitely part of a wing assembly for some alien flying machine.  To the west, a series of smaller islands petered out like diminishing punctuation.  To the east, there were two larger landmasses, one gently smoking.

 

That probably explained the rumbling.

 

The other island, which didn’t appear to be an active volcano, was further along and seemed promising, though with a sinking in his stomach, he realized he’d be rowing against the prevailing current.

 

Peering over the edge, Ronon could just make out the dart wreckage on the beach far below.  He followed that like an arrow out into the water and saw, with further disappointment, enormous shadows gliding in the blue-green depths.

 

They could be whales, he told himself, but what was the likelihood that he’d be that lucky?

 

Still, assuming he survived the climb down, having a project would be good.  Build a raft, test its seaworthiness, cobble together some means of storing freshwater and preserving food.  He estimated it would take five or six days to make the journey, assuming he stopped at the volcano island for a rest and to take on more water.

 

On day two hundred and fifty-three, he launched his raft.  In the center of the six-by-six platform, with stout ropes woven from the tough fibers of a local plant, he’d lashed a canister of water he’d improvised from one of the least damaged parts of the wraith dart.  He’d wrapped dried fish and cured hoof-animal meat in layers of broad leaves from the trees that clung to the skirt of the island’s mountain. He’d rigged a sun shelter and a rain collector—not that it rained much here—and a rudder and a heavy spear with a dart-metal tip for fending off predators.

 

He had two oars, one as a back-up for the other.

 

Ronon made it to the volcano island in the dark of the third night.  He beached the raft carefully, pulling it well above the waterline and fastening it tightly to the wide bole of a tree that had obviously withstood big waves before.  Then he laid down beneath the sun shelter and let himself sleep a little. 

 

The rowing had taken more out of him than he’d expected.  He knew this was in part because island living had weakened him and because he wasn’t getting enough fresh fruit or greens; he’d experienced the muscle cramps and fatigue before as a runner, and he knew what they harbingered.

 

If the island he was going to didn’t have more diversity of plant life, he was going to die of malnutrition.

 

It was almost ironic that he should care, but he found that he did.  He wanted the island he was going to to be better than the one he’d left. 

 

The next morning, Ronon searched for and found a source of freshwater, replenished his diminished supply, and explored in a half-mile radius for any signs of fruits.  He found tiny green pods that might have been the earliest form of a citrus-type fruit, but he wasn’t going to risk them.  There were none of the hard, hairy fruits that Sheppard called “coconuts” here and nothing recognizable as edible. 

 

Without further delay, he launched his raft and got back under way.

 

In the early morning hours of day six of his journey, when the grey-black hump of land ahead was growing slowly larger in his vision, he felt a bump against the bottom of his raft.

 

Carefully, he stowed his oar with the other, making sure they were tightly lashed, and then retrieved the impromptu weapon he’d crafted.  He waited, schooling his breath to evenness, straining his ears for any sign of the creature’s return.

 

He heard nothing, but he felt the raft tip as it was pushed upwards from below.  Throwing himself on his belly, Ronon clung to the higher part of the raft, to the side that was tilting upwards more rapidly, and with one arm, he thrust the spear downward over the rising edge of the raft as far as he could.

 

He struck something solid and felt the point of the weapon skitter away from the beast’s tough hide.

 

Beneath, the thing thrashed, tilting the raft further so that Ronon was hanging by one arm at a seventy-degree angle.

 

Loath to give up the spear but sure that he couldn’t hold on one-handed much longer, Ronan pulled himself over the far edge of his raft once more and tried a second time to drive the creature off.

  
This time, he felt the tip of his spear pierce the hide of the animal.  With an immense convulsion, it heaved upward, and Ronon felt the raft going over, his hands losing their grip as it turned on top of him and plunged him down into the water, trapped between the raft and the creature’s enormous, rolling back.

 

He’d had the foresight to take a deep breath, for all the good it would do him.  The beast was trying to shake the raft from its back, crushing Ronon between its back and the unforgiving wood.  He felt his ribs succumbing to the pressure, felt an overwhelming desire to take a breath, to shout—anything but die with his lips tight around all the things he regretted never saying.

 

Just as the urge to open his mouth grew impossible to ignore and he resigned himself to drowning, there was a cessation of pressure.

 

The creature had submerged, leaving Ronon free to pull himself along beneath the capsized raft until he broke the surface, taking in an enormous, choking lungful of air.  His arms were shaking with fatigue, his body trembling on the edge of giving out; with the last of his energy, Ronon pulled himself onto the raft, now bottom-up, and stretched out, surrendering to the seduction of darkness.

 

When he awoke, he was on fire.  The sun was a tangible weight, pinning him to the raft.  His mouth was dry, his tongue thick with thirst, and every muscle screamed in agony as he laboriously turned over and tried to sit up, shielding his eyes so that he could see where he was.

 

With growing horror, he scanned the horizon in every direction, even staggering to his feet for a better look.

 

There was nothing—no island, no suggestion of a shape, nothing breaking the monotony of water in every direction.

 

Well, that was it, then. 

 

On day two hundred fifty-nine, Ronon let gravity take him to his knees, and then he stretched out on his face to keep the sun from baking his eyeballs orange behind their lids, and he breathed in and out, a series of deep, shuddering breaths, and he let go.

 

On day two hundred and sixty, Ronon was rescued, though he didn’t know it because he was in a coma, his respiration shallow, his heartrate irregular, the skin of every exposed part of him baked an angry, peeling red.

 

His lips were stuck together, his tongue swollen, his gums turning grey and receding from his teeth, which were loose in his skull.

 

He knew none of this.  He didn’t awaken when frantic hands hauled him into the jumper, when gentle hands turned him over, when someone bathed his face and lips with lukewarm water.

 

He didn’t awaken when he was unloaded from the jumper onto a gurney and wheeled into a transporter and rushed into medical, where a nurse struggled to find a vein not already too desiccated into which to put a hydration line.

 

None of the long struggle was recorded in his memory.  He drifted on some silent, grey sea where every sensation was muffled, where he forgot himself and Atlantis and Sateda and even Sheppard.

 

He returned only reluctantly from the peace of that un-being to find a hand curled carefully in his and a messy mop of familiar dark hair resting on the edge of the bed.  He became aware of the sound of Sheppard’s breathing over the beeping of the monitors.  He wanted to touch that hair but found that he couldn’t yet command his muscles.  The best that he could manage was a twitch of the hand Sheppard held.

 

It was enough. 

 

Sheppard awoke slowly, coming back first to himself and then to the room.  Ronon watched the process on his face.  His hair was ridiculous, and it made him chuckle, a dry, creaking sound that launched him into a breath-stealing cough.

 

Sheppard said, “Hey, easy,” and poured water from a plastic pitcher into a cup with a straw and offered it to him.  “Drink slowly, or it’ll make you sick.”

 

The water was so sharp in his mouth it brought tears to his eyes and made his throat hurt.

 

When he’d taken a few sips, enough to ease the coughing, Sheppard put the cup aside.

 

Ronon regretted the loss of Sheppard’s hand in his own.

 

“We thought we’d lost you there for a while.”  He wasn’t looking at Ronon, but Ronon could see tension in the way Sheppard held himself, bracing himself as if for a death blow.

 

“Still here,” Ronon managed, though he winced at the sound of his own voice.  Talking opened the cracks on his lips, which he could feel were caked with some sticky substance. 

 

“I’m glad,” Sheppard said, and this time he did look at Ronon.  Ronon opened his near hand, hoping Sheppard would take the hint.

 

When he did, Ronon smiled, despite the pain it caused.

 

“Stop that.  Just looking at you hurts,” John kidded, but he didn’t remove his hand.  Then, the light drained from his face and he tightened his grip.

 

“We looked for you.  We all did.  We never gave up.  Rodney reconfigured the sensors on the jumper to scan at longer distances, and Carson helped him to make the LSDs more effective at deciphering human from wraith life-signs.  The dart swooped you up and went through the gate, and we got as far as the second jump it made after that, and then it was just…”

 

John looked down, shook his head, tightness at the corner of the eye Ronon could see indicating a dark road of memory he was still walking along.

 

Ronon squeezed as best he could to regain John’s attention.

 

“I knew you’d come,” he said, leaving out the part about having given up, letting go of the bitterness and the fear, seeing in John’s weary face every minute Ronon had spent doubting that he’d ever mattered to him, doubting that Atlantis had ever been his home.

 

When the tightness in his throat receded enough, he eased his grip and said, “So this surfing you told me about?”

 

“Yeah?”  Something in John’s face eased, some lightness straightened him from his usual slouch.

 

“It sucks.”

 

John laughed, a short, sharp bark of a sound.  “You were doing it wrong.  I’ll have to show you the right way.”

 

“Yeah, you will.”

 

“Soon as you’re out of here.  It’s a date?”

 

There was something vulnerable in John’s face and in the hopeful tone of his voice.

  
“Definitely,” Ronon answered, feeling sleep creeping over him.  He closed his eyes, pulled John’s hand closer to him, and let himself float back down into the grey, safe now and home for as long as the universe would let him be.


End file.
